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A
government spokesman said that following the cabinet's decision,
it would ask parliament to endorse the legal challenge on
Wednesday next week.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan has insisted Dublin would fight
any adverse ruling ever since the European Union began
investigating the U.S. tech giant's Irish tax affairs in 2014,
arguing that it had to protect a tax regime that has attracted
large numbers of multinational employers.
But at an earlier cabinet meeting on Wednesday he failed to
persuade a group of independent lawmakers, whose support is
vital for the minority government, to agree to fight the ruling
that Apple <AAPL.O> must pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5
billion) in tax to Dublin.
Ireland's main opposition party, Fianna Fail, also favours
challenging Brussels. The government should therefore easily win
parliamentary support to appeal against European Competition
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager's ruling that Apple's low tax
arrangements in Ireland constitutes illegal state aid.
Apple, anxious to defend its own interests, has already said it
will lodge an appeal. For Fine Gael, the main Irish coalition
party, a broader principle is at stake. It wants to take on
Brussels to safeguard Ireland's decades-old low corporate tax
policy that has drawn in multinationals such as Apple, creating
one in 10 jobs in what was once an impoverished country.
The Independent Alliance, a group of five lawmakers, had called
for a review of how tax is collected from Ireland's large
cluster of multinational companies before it considers a
challenge.
"We are very, very keen that from now on multinationals should
be seen to be paying their fair share of tax. That's very
important that comes out of this meeting today," Transport
Minister Shane Ross of the Independent Alliance told reporters
before the cabinet meeting.
A failure of the Alliance to come on board would have cast doubt
on the government's survival prospects. Dublin has just over two
months to lodge an appeal.
Some Irish voters are astounded that the government might turn
down a tax windfall equivalent to what it spent last year
funding the struggling health service, and the left-wing Sinn
Fein party has led attacks from the opposition.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook warned on Thursday that if the
Dublin government did not join it in appealing, this would send
the wrong message to business in a country whose economic model
depends in part on companies like his.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by David Stamp)
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